Vegan Cranberry Pistachio Loaf

The clouds part, and a chorus of angles sing as a picture of this Vegan Cranberry Pistachio Loaf appears. 🎶 “Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhh” 🎶

Too dramatic? NEVER!

But seriously, does this or doesn’t this loaf look heavenly. It does. It really does. Pour me some coffee and serve me a slice of this cake and you just found my happy place. The cake is moist, sweet, and I love how every now and then you get a tart taste of cranberry or a crunch of pistachio.

Not a fan of all that icing? It’s totally fantastic without and still looks just as pretty as a picture. …well it is a picture, so… you get it. I am loving how the cranberries and pistachios make this loaf so festive! Perfect to serve Christmas morning or during the holiday season.

Now for story time: Find a comfortable seat. Ready?

I became friends with Andrew from One Ingredient Chef, when I unsubscribed from his blog newsletter. Let me explain. I decided to follow all of my favourite people on Bloglovin’ because as a blogger, I get A LOT of email, and I thought it would be easier to keep track of my favourite blogs this way. I didn’t want Andrew to get offended so I sent him an email explaining and it turns out we became good buds and started sending music videos back and forth to each other. (I like reggae, he likes dance).

Then one fine email day, we thought it might be fun to do something where we could collaborate on some awesome vegan ideas, and so we came up with something we like to call the Vegan Mystery Box Challenge!

“What is this mysterious challenge”, you ask?

Andrew and I selected 3 mystery ingredients, and then we challenged vegan (or mostly vegan) bloggers from across the web to create a recipe using these three ingredients! Everyone posts their recipes at the same time, and share each others recipes with our readers to see what everyone came up with! How fun is that, right!? It’s very fun.

We were so excited when so many people signed up, and I was even more excited when I saw how different each and every recipe turned out.

So what were the three mystery ingredients? Cranberries, pistachios, and coconut milk! (Yeah, we went for the holiday colours). The recipe I came up with was this Vegan Cranberry Pistachio Loaf.

Check out all of these amazing recipes from the first ever Vegan Mystery Box Challenge:

Are you not blown away by that list!? I am seriously so impressed at how many people participated AND how many creative recipes everyone came up with. It just shows that you can take the same 3 ingredients and have endless ways to prepare them! So much fun.

Let me know in the comments if you love this challenge, and if you think Andrew and I should start working on round two! If you’re a vegan blogger and would to join in on the fun, sign up for the next Vegan Mystery Box Challenge. Follow the Vegan Mystery Box Challenge on social media with #VMBC

Once you are done drooling over all of the recipes, we return to my cranberry pistachio loaf cake, and I’ll show you how to make this heavenly cake.

Whisk together all the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

Whisk together all the wet ingredients in a medium bowl.

Pour the wet into the dry, and stir until just combined. Add in the cranberries and pistachios and mix in. Be careful not to over mix.

Pour the batter into a lightly greased loaf pan, then sprinkle some more cranberries and pistachios down the center of the batter. Bake for around 1 hour until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

If you wish to make the icing, mix together all the icing ingredients, then drizzle over the completely cooked cake.

Hi Nabela, Different flours react very differently in baked goods, so you can’t usually substitute them one for one. For example whole wheat flour is much heavier and denser, so it would totally change the texture of the loaf, so using 3/4 cup of whole wheat flour for every 1 cup of every all-purpose flour is often what people try. Here is a flour substitute guide that can help you. Keep in mind if you do substitute flours it will change the texture and outcome of the recipe, and you can’t really know how it will work until you try. Hope that helps!

I made this for holiday gifts and they were a hit! I used a gluten-free baking flour, and roughly chopped the nuts and berries that were stirred in, but left the ones on top whole. And don’t you know, those gift loaf pans are smaller than the regular ones, so I had enough batter left over to make a little loaf for myself 🙂 It is just delicious!

I made this for our gathering yesterday and everyone loved it. I am not normally a cranberry fan but this cranberry pistachio loaf was incredible. It was easy, quick to put together and moist and delicious.

Oh yum! I love cranberries and pistachios but never would have thought of pairing them. This looks absolutely delicious and now I know what our Christmas morning breakfast will be. Do you think it would be okay to make it the night before? Should I wait to frost it until morning? Do you buy unsalted pistachios?

Hi Keisti, Making it the day before is perfect. I would frost it the day before as well if it cools completely in time, because then the icing has a chance to set, so it’s not all drippy on your fingers… Errr fork, I mean fork. Haha! Unsalted or salted pistachios would both work great. Enjoy!

Can I use dried cranberries instead of the fresh ones? Can’t get them here in South Africa. Guess it would work and then just reduce the sugar a bit to counteract the sugar in the dried cranberries? And are the pistachios salted or just shelled or what?

Hi Maureen, I haven’t tried it with dried cranberries myself, but I think it would work just fine. If you give it a try, let us know how it turns out for you. The pistachios are just shelled, but if you have salted ones those would work well too. Enjoy!

This is such a cool idea!! Good thing the ingredients all worked together and weren’t weird (sometimes I watch Chopped and I’m just like, WHAT?). This bread looks like something my non-vegan crew would loooove!

Hehe that’s a great story of how you two met! I love the look of this recipe – I’m already imagining a slice (or two) with a mug of coffee, yum. Thanks so much for organising the challenge, it’s been so much fun taking part 🙂

I LOVE the idea. You are definitely on to something. Perfect for a Vegan Chopped TV show. The concept is terrific and since becoming vegan, I’ve stopped watching Chopped and would love to see this instead. You guys did a great job launch this, the possibilities are endless.

This loaf defintely looks at heavenly as you describe – I can’t wait to try it! This is the first year I’m bringing my “Vegan” self home to my family for the holiday and a lot of these recipes are going to be featured! I’ll be doing a lot of cooking to eliminate the “I don’t know what to feed you” woes AND convince everyone just how easy and great it is to be Vegan!

Thanks for hosting this challenge, letting me be a part of it, and just for being great like you are!

Thank you! We are going to use this to replace the Pumpkin bread we gave out to friends/neighbors/co-workers… you get the idea. I was looking for a “Change serving size” option but didn’t find one so I guess I’ll have to “math” and hope for the best! 🙂

Definitely yes to the frosting!! I wish I had a slice right now with my coffee…as soon as I restock my pistachios & cranberries it’s happening. Love how Easy it is to make. Thanks for creating the VMBC – so awesome!

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I'm Sam, welcome to my blog! Here you'll find my favourite easy vegan recipes. I went from carnivore to vegan overnight and with limitation came inspiration and it wasn't long before I fell in LOVE with vegan food. Here's my story →

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